Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations GSH Spawn

Was at the pond Sat & Sun. Schools of small fish along the bank. I was hoping they might be SMB, upon further review I believe they are GSH. Looks like the SMB are liking them.

Great pictures! That reminds me of a question I have. My nephew caught a large GSH from my pond Sat night. My brother said the abdomen was so distended it looked like it was going to explode with eggs. (we presume eggs and hopefully not some intestinal disease...)

So do gravid GSH look like this and when do they lay eggs? If they haven't laid eggs yet based on water temp then the minnows I have (which are smaller than yours) must be from last year's broods?

SetterGuy do you only have GSH? I'm hoping this year to see enough offspring from the SFS I stocked that I will see 2 distinct types of shiners.

If you can get some SFS to survive they are a neat addition to your pond but they need unique spawning structure.

Bill C taught me about these and I'm hoping the adult stockers I added will pull through for me. I put out spawning structure and didn't see any activity.. However he recommended power washing the spawning structure this spring which I did on Saturday.

The plastic cardboard stacks didn't seem to be very favored by the SFS even though I would think the holes on the ends of the corrugated plastic would be ideal size. However I had 2 stacks of CDs on a threaded rod and they seemed to like those. I saw some sticky clear blobs in between and on the bottom of the stacks so I'm hoping those were old SFS spawning egg sacs.

I need to search the archives to see what fresh SFS eggs and old egg remnants look like. I also need to make some more stacks of CDs as the spacings seemed ideal. I did threaded rod with a washer and a nut in between each CD. If you are interested in making SFS habitat and stocking I'm sure Bill C can link to a SFS spawning structure thread as he has several good pictures on that.

Congrats on your SMB, they look very fat, healthy and happy!

I found this picture from Bob-O in one of his old threads. I tried to make structures like these:

I have no SFS, and I was thinking I maybe had too many GSF, so I wasn’t planning on adding anything. I’m watching it though. I used to have so many FHM I thought they’d never be scarce. There used to be clouds of them. I have lots of pallets in the pond. Well, I haven’t seen any this spring. Maybe my SMB and YP worked them over during the winter. Plus I have (I hope) some HSB, but I’ve not seen a one since they were stocked 2.5 yrs ago. I thought the SMB (pictured) might be one. The fight was 10x what I was getting with YP and HBG.
We caught several larger GSH on worms, and in a trap. None were what I would consider distended. Slim and healthy.
Going back with more grandkids on Thurs. I’ll have tape measure and accurate scale for the SMB. Was happy to catch 6 or 7 YP. Most were average for males. One large female, and one very small one. So, I must have had some recruitment. One of my concerns was that the abundant GSH were picking off the newly hatched YP fry.
I did return all the YP, and the SMB. The HBG, weren’t as fortunate.

I'm in the same boat as you, but no predators yet. Even with no predators, I'm not seeing a lot of YP yoy anymore. I wonder if the GSH are eating the YP fry too. I may have to add some SMB or HSB to keep the GSH in check. I was hoping the YP would do that but my original YP stockers are getting a little long in the tooth (4 years old going on 5 years old for some).

I can't get the fish to go in traps anymore but hopefully you can. Sampling with traps or nets is a good idea.

I'm still rooting for you to latch into one of those HSB. I can't imagine they just died for no reason and you never saw them again. I'm told they are an 'open water' fish so they must be there cruising around?

I added a picture in my post above